When Students For Free Tibet- Bangladesh’s pro-Tibet movement in Dhaka was blogged in the Unheard Voice, a number of comments were posted for and against such movement. While the opponents argued that Bangladesh should mind its own business, others argued that Tibet issue is not that unrelated to Bangladesh’s interest.
I think Bangladesh can respond to Tibet issue in two ways- informal public campaigns in solidarity of international human rights, and through formal policy stance.
Though Bangladesh’s formal (foreign) policy stance can be influential to or separate from the public campaign, it needs to take into account a number of critical issues (when there are two elephants -China and India- in the room, one better be careful while dancing around them). Continue Reading »
Former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s eleventh-hour u-turn from the launching of national anti-poverty drive has once again renewed the recurrent concern – where is the opposition in Bangladesh politics?
At first instance, it may seem normal since such refusal is nothing new in Bangladesh. The incumbent leaders also boycotted many such calls for negotiation and cooperation when they were in opposition. But the real concern is elsewhere.
The less important issue here is the “way” BNP backtracked from the promised involvement. Khaleda Zia blamed the “events over the past few days” for this which includes deteriorating law and order, high prices of commodities and politicization of administration. There is no denying of her accusations. But the perplexing thing is that the situation was the same when her Chief Whip Zainul Abdin Farroque confirmed her presence even two days earlier (on 16 Oct). Have the alleged politicization or the worsening of law and order just started “over the past few days”? Continue Reading »
Today, I went to the St Kilda beach (Melbourne) to photograph the rise of the full moon. By the time I got to the beach, cloud was all over the sky and moon was nowhere to be seen. While I was roaming around the dark beach, disappointed, the sky turned blue (probably to make it up for me). Didn’t have to use any filter or digital post-processing for the color.
I know, the thumb-rule says, I shouldn’t have put the horizon in the middle of the picture…. but for some unknown reason, I chose to ignore the rule
GRADUALLY we are getting used to the initial covering up and subsequent disclosure of criminal cases. Under one government, we learn how an apparent killing or a bomb blast is either just an accident or deep-rooted political conspiracy. And then after the change of government, we learn how the criminal cases were distorted during the previous regime to cover up the truth. From “media created” Bangla bhai to the attack on Humayun Azad, or from the Ramna bombing of 2001 to 21st August 2004 grenade attacks — it’s the same story.
The propagated stories, often hilarious, raise concerns over the law enforcing agencies. But all the more astonishing is how the investigators, after the series of exposures of such case-distortions, continue to twist new cases and spin new tales, and still expect us to believe them!
Distortion of a criminal case at the hand of the investigators may emanate from political pressure or from incompetence in probing the act. Continue Reading »
The budget for the fiscal year 2009-10 (FY2010) has attracted a mixed response and has been termed as bold as well as exaggerated, conservative as well as ambitious, and challenging as well as full of rhetoric by different quarters. While pro-poor allocations and taxation has been appreciated, controversial proposals such as the black money recycling scheme invited widespread criticism. While the budget has taken some traditional stances such as block allocations and high government borrowing, it has also introduced some new approaches such as the public private partnership and economic decentralisation.
This article will analyse some good, bad and unknown issues of this year’s budget by exploring different budget proposals and post-budget discussions.
Incidentally when the manifestos for National Election 2008 were being prepared, the world economy was already in recession and the election promises were linked with the recovery. This must have facilitated the budget to address the recession and election promises in chorus and with success.
The budget admits the challenges ahead forecasting a 5.5% GDP growth, but it also aims to change that conservative scenario by promoting investment, decentralisation and infrastructural development. The finance minister has received a mixed (though largely positive) response for various proposals. This article however underscores few uncertainties surrounding the budget proposals.
The finance minister is set to put forward the national budget for fiscal year 2009-10 today. This is the first budget of this government after the restoration of democracy and also the first budget of this finance minister under a democratically elected government.
Over the last few months numerous proposals/demands have been made to the finance minister from different stakeholder groups. At the same time, scores of speculations have been printed about the probable size and composition of the budget. Today, as the finance minister rehearses his budget speech, let’s go over some of the key issues that will be fundamental to assess the new budget once it is announced. Continue Reading »
THERE have been some strong media speculations that the coming budget will introduce Public Private Partnership (PPP) to Bangladesh. This will have lasting implications for our development.
Off-budget financing of development programs is not a new phenomenon. Over the past few decades, many governments encouraged off-budget financing by private sectors to meet the growing public debt. In 1992, the Conservative government of John Major first introduced a systematic PPP program in the UK, which was later continued by the subsequent Labour governments. Continue Reading »
খবরটা পড়ার পর থেকেই বারবার জর্জ বার্নাডশ’ ও জনৈক সুন্দরী নায়িকার গল্পটা মনে পড়ছে! পত্রিকায় খবর বেরিয়েছে, আমাদের আগামী বাজেট হবে সরকারী ও বেসরকারী অংশীদারিত্বের (পাবলিক-প্রাইভেট-পার্টনারশিপ বা পিপিপি) বাজেট। অর্থাত্ আগামী বছর থেকে শিক্ষা, স্বাস্থ্য এবং অবকাঠামো উন্নয়ন প্রকল্পে সরকারের সাথে বেসরকারী বিনিয়োগও যুক্ত হবে।
কিন্তু বার্নাডশ’র গল্পের সাথে এর সর্ম্পক কী? বলছি। তবে গল্প বলার আগে শানেনযুলটা দিয়ে নিই। Continue Reading »
It was appalling to witness the fast swinging of the “sentiment pendulum” during the course of the BDR mutiny. When the first news of the mutiny broke, the sentiment pendulum decisively swung towards the mutineers, partly owing to their socio-economic background but mainly due to the stories of deprivation they managed to deliver to the public.
We saw people gathering around the BDR gates shouting solidarity, media focusing on the deprivation of soldiers, and some pundits even going as far as portraying it a “class revolt.”
After the mass graveyards were discovered, however, the sentiment pendulum swung hard in the opposite direction. People were shocked with the brutality of the massacre. Media switched from “mutiny” to “carnage” in referring to the incident. Around the world people took part in spontaneous candle light vigils. Continue Reading »
THE ninth parliamentary elections in Bangladesh saw a landslide victory for the Awami League. The high-turnout election also saw Bangladeshi voters turn away from the BNP and its alliance partner, Jamaat-e-Islami.
The Jamaat, which had captured 17 seats in the 2001 parliamentary elections, was reduced to 2 seats in the 300-seat parliament in the 2008 elections. For Jamaat in particular and religion-based politics in general, it was a resounding electoral defeat.
The Awami League has won the National Election 2008 by a stunning landslide for many solid reasons including some indefensible faults of its opponent. In a pre-election analysis Jyoti Rahman and I identified five decisive factors which were likely to determine the results of this election.1
In the absence of a credible exit-poll, this article revaluates those determinants and correlates them with the final election results to see exactly what happened on December 29, 2008.
These are the five reasons, all of them reinforcing, which together created the conducive environment for AL’s massive win.
Anti-Incumbency
In western democracies, election result always goes against the incumbent when 50 percent of the voters think that the country is not on the right trajectory. Evidently, Bangladesh is no different either. Continue Reading »
South Asian Journalists Association [SAJA] orgnised this BlogTalk on “Bangladesh Elections and What they Mean” on January 05, 2009.
Speakers include: * Syeed Ahamed (i.e. me), * Steve Herman, South Asia bureau chief, VOA * Sara Hossain, a lawyer in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh * Prof. Ali Riaz, chair in the Department of Government & Politics at Illinois State University; and * Asif Saleh, Executive director of Drishtipat.
reasons including some indefensible faults of its opponent. In a pre-election analysis Jyoti Rahman and I identified five decisive factors which were likely to determine the results of this election.1